Warrenton aldermen are taking Meridian Waste to task over numerous complaints from city residents about the trash hauler’s service. Aldermen threatened at their Aug. 4 public meeting to cancel Meridian’s contract.

“We have had approximately 61 complaints on them since January,” Brandie Walters, Warrenton director of operations, told the board. “Multiple complaints where their trash is not eing picked up, or (Meridian) is not delivering totes, or there’s multiple weeks that they’re not picking up at the same locations.”

Ward 2 Alderman Gary Auch added that his neighbors complain that their street “looks like a bomb went off” after the trash truck comes through, because the trash bins are thrown around haphazardly.

Walters said city staff are having to spend significant time following up with Meridian and with resident customers to make sure each complaint is being addressed. Meridian often doesn’t answer its customer service line, Walters said, and even after written complaints does not permanently resolve the issues.

“On four different occasions I’ve sent them emails and said ‘How can we fix these problems moving forward?’ They do respond when there is an issue; however, we’re not getting anything fixed moving forward,” Walters commented.

Bob Mathis, area president for Meridian, spoke to the board of aldermen Aug. 4 and apologized for the company’s failure to address the complaints. He said Meridian has been having staffing issues since the beginning of the year.

In particular, Mathis said COVID-19 has had some employees working from home and caused the company to proactively put 37 employees on leave when they’ve felt ill.

“We take that very serious, because we deal with the public every day. So we put them on a two-week COVID leave immediately,” Mathis explained. “It’s impacted not only our driver group, but also our customer service.”

Mathis committed to immediately submitting a plan for improving Meridian’s service, and asked for 90 days to show that the problems had been addressed.

Aldermen told him they would consider the request, but weren’t accepting COVID-19 as an excuse.

“A lot of our complaints were prior to the COVID issue. ... I think you guys have some work to do to continue operating in the city of Warrenton,” admonished Ward 1 Alderman Cheryl Dyer.

Aldermen agreed to hold off any action to allow Meridian time to submit its plan for corrections.

Several days later, Walters informed The Record that Meridian followed through on providing an improvement plan the day after the scolding. The company has assigned a dedicated customer service line to Warrenton residents, Walters said. A manager also visited the city after last week’s trash pickup to verify there had been no issues.